Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind Mind is the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term is often used to refer, by implication, to the thought processes of reason. Mind manifests itself subjectively as a stream of consciousness may, at least in part, be composed of separate innate structures which have established, evolutionarily Evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations. This change results from interactions between processes which introduce variation into a population, and other processes which remove it. As a result, variants with particular traits become more, or less, common. A trait is a particular developed functional purposes. Proponents believe this view is implied by Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of's concept of a universal Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans (linguistic nativism). It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages. Universal grammar proposes a set of rules intended to explain language acquisition in child, generative grammar In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences. In most approaches to generative grammar, the rules will also predict the morphology of a. Such universal features of language imply the existence of an underlying "language acquisition device Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with speech or manual as in sign. Language acquisition" structure in the brain. This device is postulated to be autonomous and specialized for learning language rapidly – a module.

Contents

Fodor's Modularity of Mind

Historically, questions regarding the functional architecture of the mind have been divided into two different theories of the nature of the faculties. The first can be characterized as a horizontal view because it refers to mental processes as if they are interactions between faculties such as memory, imagination, judgement, and perception, which are not domain specific Domain specificity is a theoretical position in cognitive science that argues that many aspects of cognition are supported by specialized, presumably evolutionarily specified, learning devices. The position is a close relative of modularity of mind, but is considered more general in that it does not necessarily entail all the assumptions of (e.g., a judgement remains a judgement whether it refers to a perceptual experience or to the comprehension of language). The second can be characterized as a vertical view because it claims that the mental faculties are differentiated on the basis of domain specificity, are genetically determined, are associated with distinct neurological structures, and are computationally autonomous.

The vertical vision goes back to the 19th century movement called phrenology Phrenology was especially popular from about 1810 until 1840. Following the materialist notions of mental functions originating in the brain, phrenologists believed that human conduct could best be understood in neurological rather than abstract terms. It is now considered a pseudoscience. Developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall in 1796, and its founder Franz Joseph Gall Franz Joseph Gall was a neuroanatomist, physiologist, and pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain, who claimed that the individual mental faculties could be associated precisely, in a sort of one to one correspondence, with specific physical areas of the brain. Hence, someone's level of intelligence, for example, could be literally "read off" from the size of a particular bump on his posterior parietal lobe. This simplistic view of modularity has, of course, been disproven over the course of the last century.

In the 1980s, however, Jerry Fodor Jerry Alan Fodor is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist. He holds the position of State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and is the author of many works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, in which he has laid the groundwork for the modularity of mind and the language of thought revived the idea of the modularity of mind, although without the notion of precise physical localizability. Drawing from Chomsky and other work in linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words as well as from the philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of modern analytic philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e. the relationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as the central issue in and the implications of optical illusions An optical illusion is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source. There are three main types: literal optical illusions that create images that are different, he became one of its most articulate proponents with the 1983 publication of Modularity of Mind.[1]

According to Fodor, a module falls somewhere between the behaviorist and cognitivist views of lower-level processes.

Behaviorists Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior), is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be tried to replace the mind with reflexes which Fodor describes as encapsulated (cognitively impenetrable or unaffected by other cognitive domains) and non-inferential (straight pathways with no information added). Low level processes are unlike reflexes in that they are inferential. This can be demonstrated by poverty of the stimulus arguments in which the proximate stimulus, that which is initially received by the brain (such as the 2D image received by the retina), cannot account for the resulting output (for example, our 3D perception of the world), thus necessitating some form of computation.

In contrast, cognitivists In psychology, cognitivism is a theoretical approach in understanding the mind using quantitative, positivist and scientific methods, that describes mental functions as information processing models.[citation needed] saw lower level processes as continuous with higher level processes, being inferential and cognitively penetrable (influenced by other cognitive domains, such as beliefs). The latter has been shown to be untrue in some cases, such as with many visual illusions (ex. Müller-Lyer illusion), which can persist despite a person’s awareness of their existence. This is taken to indicate that other domains, including one’s beliefs, cannot influence such processes.

Fodor arrives at the conclusion that such processes are inferential like higher order processes and encapsulated in the same sense as reflexes.

Although he argued for the modularity of 'lower level' cognitive processes in Modularity of Mind he also argued that higher level cognitive processes are not modular since they have dissimilar properties. The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, a reaction to Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker is a prominent Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and author of popular science. Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, Pinker is known for his wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational's How the Mind Works, is devoted to this subject.

Fodor (1983) states that modular systems must - at least to "some interesting extent" - fulfill certain properties:

  1. Domain specificity, modules only operate on certain kinds of inputs – they are specialised
  2. Informational encapsulation, modules need not refer to other psychological systems in order to operate
  3. Obligatory firing, modules process in a mandatory manner
  4. Fast speed, probably due to the fact that they are encapsulated (thereby needing only to consult a restricted database) and mandatory (time need not be wasted in determining whether or not to process incoming input)
  5. Shallow outputs, the output of modules is very simple
  6. Limited accessibility
  7. Characteristic ontogeny Ontogeny (ontos present participle of 'to be', genesis 'creation') describes the origin and the development of an organism from the fertilized egg to its mature form. Ontogeny is studied in developmental biology, developmental psychology, developmental cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychobiology. Ontogeny is that branch of life science, there is a regularity of development
  8. Fixed neural architecture.

Pylyshyn (1999) has argued that while these properties tend to occur with modules, one stands out as being the real signature of a module; that is the encapsulation of the processes inside the module from both cognitive influence and from cognitive access.[2] This is referred to as the "cognitive impenetrability" of the module.

Evolutionary psychology

Other perspectives on modularity come from evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology, particularly from the work of Leda Cosmides Leda Cosmides, is an American psychologist, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, helped develop the field of evolutionary psychology and John Tooby John Tooby is an American anthropologist, who, together with psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology. This perspective suggests that modules are units of mental processing that evolved in response to selection pressures. On this view, much modern human psychological activity is rooted in adaptations that occurred earlier in human evolution Human evolution, or anthropogenesis, is the origin and evolution of Homo sapiens as a distinct species from other hominids, great apes and placental mammals. The study of human evolution encompasses many scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, primatology, archaeology, linguistics and genetics, when natural selection Natural selection is a natural law by which genetically heritable traits become more or less common in a population over successive generations. This selection in interaction with the production of variation, the possible genetic fixation process and possibly, in several cases, whith little epigenetic process determine the evolution of the species was forming the modern human species.

Arguments against modularity

In contrast to modular mental structure, some theories posit domain-general processing, in which mental activity is distributed across the brain and cannot be decomposed, even abstractly, into independent units. A staunch defender of this view is William Uttal, who argues in The New Phrenology (2003) that there are serious philosophical, theoretical, and methodological problems with the entire enterprise of trying to localize cognitive processes in the brain The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate, and most invertebrate, animals. Some primitive animals such as jellyfish and starfish have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all. In vertebrates, the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary.[3] Part of this argument is that a successful taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek τάξις, taxis and νόμος, nomos (meaning 'law' or 'science'). Taxonomy uses taxonomic units, known as taxa (singular taxon) of mental processes has yet to be developed.

See also

For contrasting views:

References

  1. ^ Fodor, Jerry A. (1983). Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-56025-9
  2. ^ Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1999). Is vision continuous with cognition? The case for cognitive impenetrability of visual perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(3), 341-423. Full text
  3. ^ Uttal, William R. (2003). The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Further reading

Evolutionary psychology Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology
Psychology portal Although the disorder is primarily thought to affect cognition, it can also contribute to chronic problems with behavior and emotion. Due to the many possible combinations of symptoms, heated debate is ongoing about whether the diagnosis necessarily or adequately describes a disorder, or alternatively whether it might represent a number of · Evolutionary biology portal Tarbosaurus at the Naturkundemuseum Münster in Münster, Germany
Processes Altruism Reciprocal altruism is a concept, introduced into evolutionary biology by Robert Trivers, which explains the evolution of cooperation as instances of mutually altruistic acts. The concept is close to the one of Tit for Tat known in game theory · Group selection In evolutionary biology, group selection refers to the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the alleles' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group · Kin selection Some organisms tend to exhibit strategies that favor the reproductive success of their relatives, even at a cost to their own survival and/or reproduction. The classic example is a eusocial insect colony, with sterile females acting as workers to assist their mother in the production of additional offspring. Many evolutionary biologists explain · Sexual selection · Sociobiology Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines which attempts to explain social behavior in animal species by considering the Darwinian advantages specific behaviors may have. It is often considered a branch of biology and sociology, but also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics and other · Coevolution In a broad sense, biological coevolution is "the change of a biological object triggered by the change of a related object". Coevolution can occur at multiple levels of biology: it can be as microscopic as correlated mutations between amino acids in a protein, or as macroscopic as covarying traits between different species in an · Evolutionarily stable strategy In game theory and behavioural ecology, an evolutionarily stable strategy is a strategy which, if adopted by a population of players, cannot be invaded by any alternative strategy that is initially rare. An ESS is an equilibrium refinement of the Nash equilibrium -- it is a Nash equilibrium which is "evolutionarily" stable meaning that
Areas Psychological development Evolutionary developmental psychology, , is the application of the basic principles of Darwinian evolution, particularly natural selection, to explain contemporary human development. It involves the study of the genetic and environmental mechanisms that underlie the universal development of social and cognitive competencies and the evolved · Morality The evolution of morality refers to the emergence of human moral behavior over the course of human evolution. Morality can be defined as a system of ideas about right and wrong conduct. In everyday life, morality is typically associated with human behavior and not much thought is given to the social conducts of other creatures. The emerging fields · Religion Evolutionary psychology of religion is based on the hypothesis that religious belief can be explained by the evolution of the human brain. As with all other organ functions, cognition's functional structure has been argued to have a genetic basis, and is therefore subject to the effects of natural selection. Like other organs and tissues, this · Depression Major depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide, and in 2000 was the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease ; it is also an important risk factor for suicide. It is understandable, then, that clinical depression is thought to be a pathology — a major dysfunction of the brain. In most cases, rates of organ · Developmental psychopathology · Educational psychology · Music The origins of the field can be traced back to Charles Darwin who wrote in his Descent of Man:
Seminal writers Pascal Boyer Pascal Boyer is a french anthropologist who advocates the idea that human instincts provide us with the basis for an intuitive theory of mind that guides our social relations, morality, and predilections toward religious beliefs. Boyer and others propose that these innate mental systems make human beings predisposed to certain cultural elements · David Buss David M. Buss is a professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, known for his evolutionary psychology research on human sex differences in mate selection · Leda Cosmides Leda Cosmides, is an American psychologist, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, helped develop the field of evolutionary psychology · Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist[I] who established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection. He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 18 · Richard Dawkins Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science author. He was formerly Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford and was a fellow of New College, Oxford · Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, · Jared Diamond · David Geary · Kevin B. MacDonald · Geoffrey Miller · Steven Mithen · John Tooby · Robert Trivers · E. O. Wilson · D. S. Wilson
Related subjects Memetics · Sociobiology · Evolutionary neuroscience · Human evolution · Sociocultural evolution · Evolutionary anthropology · Evolutionary medicine · Evolutionary linguistics
Lists Evolutionary psychologists · Evolutionary Psychology Research Groups and Centers · Bibliography of evolution and human behavior

Categories: Behavioural sciences | Cognition | Cognitive science | Evolutionary psychology | Ethology | Linguistics | Philosophy of mind | Semantics

 

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